You would want to know if you were aware of North Korea’s recent threats. Why has the mainstream media not given more significant coverage to North Korea’s outright threat to use a nuclear weapon against the U.S.? Yes, North Korea has a history of sabre rattling, mostly used as propaganda for its own population. However, tensions are certainly high in the region, with the regime issuing repeated warnings to South Korea and the United States, punctuated with missiles fired. The USA article, linked herein, includes a video released by North Korea, depicting a nuclear attack directly on the U.S., with a warning of “Last Chance”. North Korea has stated that it is both willing and able to drop a hydrogen bomb on the U.S., specifically referencing New York and/or Washington, D.C., and their willingness to do so as a pre-emptive strike without military provocation.
President Obama is scheduled to host a meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tomorrow at the White House. The agenda is the North Korean threat. Simultaneously, world leaders are gathering for a Nuclear Security Summit, also in D.C. tomorrow and Friday. North Korea does not like this. The summits have been part of a continued international effort to reduce the risk of nuclear war, including the use of nuclear weapons by terrorist organizations. This summit will not ignore the immediate and escalated threat of North Korea, with meetings scheduled between China, South Korea, and Japan. Russia has refused to participate, in protest of the perceived leadership of the United States in hosting the summit. But, even Russia, a N. Korea ally, has denounced the threats of preemptive attack on the U.S.
North Korea is threatening to drop a bomb on the United States. There may be no further warning. Do we wait? Wait for their “preemptive strike” against us, and then retaliate? Is this threat itself an act of war? Could these threats be mere barking, and unlikely to result in any action, as has happened in the past? With North Korea now having the ability to carry out these threats with long range missiles, can we take the chance? While nothing would be gained by mass hysteria, it seems we should all be worried. Yet, I look around and everyone is going about their business. Government officials are releasing statements that they are taking this seriously, but I don’t see anything on a local level. It seems irresponsible that local governments in at least New York and D.C. are not taking steps to prepare for the possibility, and warning the population. I would not want my family to be in D.C. in the coming weeks.
The fear of nuclear war has faded into distant memory with the end of the Cold War. We, as a people, took that threat very seriously. It was part of the national dialogue, and a major concern, with bomb drills in schools, building of bomb shelters, and quite a few movies made on the subject. I see none of that in response to the same threat made by North Korea. Maybe this threat seems less real because it is made by an unstable leader that we don’t take seriously, and that most people probably have little awareness of what we are fighting about. It’s similar to terrorism in its feeling of arbitrary, unprovoked violence, where we have all been forced to live our lives and just hope it doesn’t happen where we are.
We need to talk about this. We need to know how we will be protected if this threat is carried out. We need to respond when we are threatened with destruction of our cities, and massacre of our citizens. We need to be outraged. We need to be ready. We need to squash this threat and do so before we have suffered the unimaginable losses that would be sustained if North Korea makes good on it.
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